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Monday, December 12, 2011

Antiochian Orthodox Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles Elevated in Rank

Patriarch Ignatios IV (Hazim) of Antioch has elevated Bishop Joseph (al-Zehlaoui) of Los Angeles, an auxiliary of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of North America, to the rank of archbishop. Axios! The report of the elevation can be found on the website of the former Diocese of Los Angeles.

The Author

Welcome to my blog! I, the author, am an American/Canadian Orthodox Christian born in Central Africa and raised there and in the Pacific Northwest, the Caribbean, and the Horn of Africa with a short 2-year stint at a boarding school in East Africa. I moved to the American Midwest for university and since then have lived here and in Eastern Europe, the Horn of Africa, and the Pacific Northwest.

I became a catechumen in an Antiochian Orthodox church during high school, spent the rest of high school attending Greek and Kikuyu-speaking Alexandrian and Coptic Orthodox churches (as well as the occasional Ethiopian and Armenian Orthodox church), and was finally received into Orthodoxy in an American Orthodox ("OCA") church in the Midwest.

In the years since my conversion I've been on the move quite a lot and consequently have had the opportunity to be involved in American, Ethiopian, Greek, Russian, and Ukrainian Orthodox parishes for extended periods of time and also visit Albanian, Armenian, Bulgarian, Coptic, Greek, Malankara, Old Ritualist, Romanian, and Serbian Orthodox churches. What amazes me the most about my experiences of Old World Orthodoxy is that countries as diverse and far apart as Russia and Ethiopia, Egypt and the Ukraine, et cetera, can still witness to the same Apostolic Faith.

I'm not the most faithful Orthodox Christian, but my faith remains central in my life as I wander the globe. If I'm overly dramatic in how I portray things at times, then that's probably why :-). As Dostoevsky said, "Judge our people not by what they are, but by what they wish to become." Judge accordingly, and please remember me in your prayers!

On a side note, the reasoning behind the naming of this blog can be found here, whilst the listing of Local Orthodox Churches includes both the autocephalous churches (ranked according to my own personal diptychs ;-) ) and the autonomous and/or self-governing churches with their mother churches in parentheses. The status of some of the Orthodox Churches listed is considered controversial, but their mysteries are generally recognized as true and their current exclusion from world Orthodoxy appears to be largely political in origin and therefore, in my history-oriented view, of passing significance.